Five Tips For Remote Teams

15-20 years ago, we read a multitude of articles that indicated that remote work was the new trend. Some companies did go down this path but it didn't become a reality for most people. In my own industry, I do occasionally see remote work offered to actual employees. However, it's with the consulting end that I work in where remote work has become the norm.

Having been part of many of these teams, there are some situations where this is more successful than others. Here are five tips I would give toward having a successful remote team:

1. Don't sit around worrying about what might or might not happen. If you sit around worrying whether people are actually doing their work -OR- sitting around surfing the internet and eating candy you'll just drive yourself crazy. Finds ways to build trust and ways to measure performance, instead.
2. Good project management. This is more important with a remote team than with a team where people sit together. It is no longer possible to just walk around and get a feel for how things are going. Instead, you have to have a project plan to give an idea what tasks are assigned where and what their progress is. Companies without good project management usually have poor remote work team performance.
3. Use the tools, properly. When the team decides on specific tools that are meant to help remote work teams, every team member must religiously use these tools. For example, if the team decides to use MS Communicator to indicate when they're working and when they're not, every single team member must learn to use these status changes so that other team members don't have to guess. Another example is that, if two team members are trying to resolve an issue with chat or e-mail and not succeeding, then it's time to use the phone. All of this can be covered in an orientation session.
4. Consider bringing the team on-site, at least once. Bringing everyone in to meet face-to-face, learn the tools, get their equipment, and get all the up-front details settled is a good idea. Not only is it easier to do this all at one time and with team members together BUT it's also useful to get the team members together to meet each other. Once they leave, it's not quite as easy to ignore requests from team mates that they've met and feel that they know than it is if they are all strangers. Some team members find it easy to ignore strangers, even if they are team members. Including some social events in this meeting is a good idea, as well.
5. Maintain communication. One of the worst things you can do is let a remote team feel as if they're missing out on information. If they know that the end of the project is coming and that they'll all have to leave, keep them up-to-date. Sometimes, that just means telling them that you don't have new information. However, when you don't tell them anything, it's human nature to try to guess what's "really" going on. You'll find them doing less and less work as they have an increasing number of side conversations fretting about what they're missing. It is EXTREMELY easy for remote teams to begin to feel left-out.

Recently, I'd written a post in my own blog pulling together all the articles I'd written on remote teams. For those of you who are interested in reading more, here's that link:  Remote Teams